


And it Will Involve a Mirror

by put it back (HereThereBeFic)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, M/M, Resurrection, Side Quests
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-23 11:22:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/925797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereThereBeFic/pseuds/put%20it%20back
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Speak of the devastating storm of possibly underworldly origins, an update was just slipped under the door of the recording booth, listeners! I dare not ask who by."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: Blood, injury, death, and all of those things happening to sea creatures. Also, a tornado.

_**And now, corrections: Last night, listeners, we shared with you an apple pie recipe sent in by Old Woman Josie, out near the car lot. The recipe came with a note informing us that it had been revealed to her by angles. We corrected this to “angels” before broadcasting, assuming it to be a spelling error, as, to be fair to us, her house** _ **is full** _**of angels. We have since been informed that the original spelling was correct. Old Woman Josie says that several tiny stone structures appeared on her kitchen table, in the shape of arrows, pointing at various ingredients in the room, and that the measure of the angles of each arrow told her the necessary measurements – though, she says, she did have to guess whether to use tablespoons or teaspoons. Furthermore, she says that the angels do not know the first thing about baking, and she has asked that the employee who made the correction not receive punishment, as the thought of any of them giving her advice on the subject was more entertaining than anything she has seen on television in a while.** _

_**Lucky for intern Jared, this wish was conveyed to Management just in the nick of time.** _

_**And now, a word from our sponsors!** _

–

–

As the pre-recorded clip played, Cecil finally picked up his phone, which had been lighting up periodically with a voicemail notification for the past five minutes.

It was Carlos. Cecil grinned widely and leaned back in his chair as he listened, always happy to hear that voice.

“ _Hi, Cecil, I know you're at work so I'll be fast – some of the equipment here is registering a sort of weather... event. It shouldn't be possible, so given past experience, I'm assuming it's real. I mean Lauren was our last meteorological expert, so I might be misinterpreting the readings, but I've checked it all several times and I don't see what I could possibly be – Cecil, there are_ _ **sharks**_ _–”_

But the sponsor's message was ending, and so, regretfully, Cecil muted his phone as the ON AIR sign lit back up.

With practiced hands, and only a little haltingly as speech was given the brunt of his focus, he texted Carlos under the table:

_listenned up 2 sharks and hat 2 stop comercail over. sure its nothing Carlos no word from coucnil police or mmgnt._

–

–

_**And now, traffic!** _

_**The tree lying across your driveway is not real. I repeat: it is not. real. Nearly two thirds of residents have called in to the city council to report a downed tree blocking their path, to which a representative for the council has responded: “Come on, guys. We live in a desert. What's more likely, that a huge tree grew out of nowhere and toppled noiselessly in front of your home, or that forces you do not understand are causing you to perceive that there is a tree where there is not?**_ ”

_**The representative later added, “And don't even bring up The Whispering Forest, because none of the complaints said ANYTHING about whispering! Honestly, people, what's next, you want us to hold your hand while you cross the street during reverse driving hour? USE your allotment of independent thought!”** _

–

–

Carlos was entering last-second corrections on his iPad, cursing quietly under his breath, and had one foot over the threshold of the lab door when the words “reverse driving hour” filtered into his thoughts and brought him up short.

Was that on Tuesdays or Fridays? They had _just_ moved it from one to the other, but he wasn't sure which way around the switch had gone. It was anyone's guess on any given day what the time actually was, so the fact that it was currently apparently evening, and most previous occurrences of the hour had hit at some point in what appeared to be the early morning, was not a particularly comforting one.

He climbed into his car with a pained sigh, deciding to risk it.

It wasn't that he didn't trust the other drivers, really. Most of them had lived here all their lives, after all, and had had plenty of practice. It was just that the Secret Police in charge of traffic stops had been more vigilant of late, and it was _so_ difficult to get the reverse turn signals right.

–

–

_**Big Rico's is offering a special deal this week, listeners! Guess the secret ingredient in your gluten-free pizza slice, and a randomly selected fellow patron's wages will be mysteriously slashed on their next payday. The lost money may or may not actually slide through a temporal rift and appear in your wallet in the present as you go to pay for your pizza, but it certainly won't be appearing in one unlucky diner's future pocket. That much is for sure! Entry into this special deal is automatic upon stepping foot into the restaurant.** _

–

–

The interns on the ground floor greeted Carlos cheerily, as they always did, whether or not he had ever actually met them. He nodded and tried to look friendly as he sprinted past, wrenching open the door to the stairwell and taking the steps two at a time up to the third floor – he knew better than to attempt using the station elevator on a day ending in _y_. It could only really be trusted on R E M E M B R A N C E, which replaced Sunday once every two months.

As always, the second floor doorway appeared to actually be melted into the floor, the ceiling, the walls, and itself, and, as always, wondering what might possibly be behind it for more than a second made the left half of his body feel suddenly inside out, so he shook his head and continued on, clutching his iPad closer, lest the fleeting feeling of exposed nerves and tendons loosen his grip.

He had asked Cecil, once, why the station needed three floors, and Cecil had given him a _look_ – a look that Carlos had grown accustomed to during his first year or so in town, one which usually meant something along the lines of _aren't you supposed to be a scientist?_  It was a look he'd been getting less and less often, recently.

He'd never asked about the station again.

–

–

 _**Don't forget, listeners, tomorrow marks the end of the third quarter. That's all this says. I am... not sure what tomorrow marks the end of the third quarter** _ **of** _ **, but if you know, don't forget it!** _

_**Oh! This** _ **is** _**a surprise, listeners. Carlos has joined us in the recording booth, looking irritated and out of breath, though, of course, no less sublime for either of those things. While I am always happy to add scientifically relevant bulletins to the broadcast, all materials exceeding thirty seconds in presentation and not officially sanctioned by Management, the City Council, or the Sheriff's Secret Police, MUST be submitted at least half a day in advance, and I am not permitted to make any exceptions to this rule. So, alas, I cannot tell you, radio audience, about any of the numbers, words, or pictures, on the screen of the iPad being shoved into my field of vision. I would gladly do so if I could, but I can't, no matter how many times Carlos taps the screen and says "Sharks, Cecil! Jellyfish! EELS! In the sky!"** _

–

–

The first few times something like this had happened, Carlos hadn't fully understood what Cecil was trying to do. Now, he just made sure to blurt out important buzzwords, as anything he did or said was fair game for reporting on in the name of live commentary. As long as the contents of any document he tried to present were never explicitly described on their own terms, they were safe.

Just as Carlos was in the middle of attempting to translate the charts and graphs into something that Cecil could paraphrase into something his audience would understand, the sirens hit.

On the one hand, Carlos thought, as he clapped his iPad against the side of his head and doubled over in pain, at least this would hammer his point home with more immediate clarity than he could ever hope to achieve. Assuming the sirens weren't about something else – which was, admittedly, a bit of a leap.

He straightened up as the psychic undertones faded from the sirens, leaving just the much more tolerable blaring noise to cope with. Cecil remained hunched over his desk for a moment longer, always much more sensitive to telepathic signals, but sat up when an intern rushed in with a crumpled paper clutched in one trembling hand.

"From Management," she gasped, slamming the paper down on the desk and stumbling to the wall. "From - the Council." Her left sleeve appeared to be singed. It was still smoking.

Cecil's eyebrows rose as he read the note, and he _tsk_ ed disapprovingly before leaning into the microphone and beginning to speak.

–

–

_**Listeners, Intern Nadia has just handed me a note, sent in moments ago by the City Council.** _

_**All citizens be advised of an incoming weather event, which has been described by witnesses as “a horrifying monstrosity of a tornado," apparently full of marine life and flinging the unfortunate creatures wherever it goes. Reports have come in of a beluga whale crashing headlong through a row of houses. Citizens are urged to seek safety in basements, underground storm shelters, and, failing that, windowless rooms. Doorless rooms would, in fact, be ideal. This will of course make the secret police's monitoring duties more difficult, but desperate times call for desperate, temporary measures. The storm will be upon us in roughly – now. This is** _ **regardless** _**of where exactly you are and what time of day it is there. The storm has achieved Level Three Temporal Omnipotence, and is happening** _ **right now** _**, blatantly indifferent to any location's usual level of time displacement relative to surrounding areas. The council apologizes for the short notice. They had intended to send the warning out twenty minutes ago, Fourth Street Standard Time, but were delayed by a citizen who called to complain about the waste collectors utilizing the landfill as a clandestine meeting place, which he feels is not an appropriate use of a tax-sponsored site. The citizen is not named, but I think we all know who it was. Thanks a lot,** _ **Steve** _ **.**_

_**For those of you who still have access to a radio, please the enjoy the following three-minute recording of sounds that have been scientifically proven as soothing in times of great stress. They're mostly actually people hitting alarm clocks with hammers and stones. Who'd have thought?** _

–

–

The floor was beginning to shake.

"Cecil, we need to _move,_ " Carlos tried to insist calmly over the noise of not only the sirens, but now also high-speed winds and what sounded sickeningly like terrified whale song.

In the hallway, a red light started to blink, hazy and ominous through the glass wall of the booth.

"Nadia, you're dismissed," Cecil said sharply. "Get to the basement. _Now_."

Nadia gave the same sort of half-salute that Carlos had seen several interns give when taking an order from Cecil, and even in these circumstances he couldn't really tell whether or not it was serious. "Yes sir," she said, and bolted.

"The red light is for the interns," Cecil explained calmly, once she had gone. "She's new, and the emergency training only happens once a week. She wouldn't know yet."

"Cecil."

"The blue light is for everyone else," Cecil said quietly. "The orange light is for me. I can't leave until then."

"Cecil, there is a _manta ray_ plastered to the window behind your head." 

Cecil didn't turn to look. He glanced down at one of the screens on the broadcasting equipment. "Two minutes left on this recording. Then I have the community calendar to get through. And then community health tips, and then the weather. Then the sign-off. If I haven't been dismissed before then, that's when I'm free to go."

Carlos leaned back against the glass wall and ran one hand down his face. "You _cannot_ be serious."

"I would much rather take my chances with something we at least know the parameters of than be subjected to Management's idea of disciplinary actions," Cecil said, leaning back in his chair. "No one has ever directly disobeyed the emergency safety protocols, and I'm not about to be the one to find out what such an action would provoke."

The only thing Carlos could manage to say to that was a sort of strangled, frustrated sound, which was mostly lost under all the noise.

Cecil glanced down at the screen again. "Forty-five seconds before I'm back on the air. You're a civilian. You're free to go, if you want. There's a shelter in the basement. The arrows in the stairwell should be lit up by now. Follow them. Thirty-five seconds. Try to get into the first one or two, it'll be easier to find you when I get there. Thirty seconds." He was flipping idly through cue cards, tossing a few aside and reshuffling them with far more concentration than strictly necessary. "If those shelters are full, the basement doors will be locked, and then your best bet is probably to just stay at the bottom of the stairwell, against the doors. Twenty seconds. Carlos. If - if I don't – I mean, I _will_ , but if I don't –"

Carlos rolled his eyes. He sat on the edge of Cecil's desk, pulling him forward in his rolling chair and pressing a kiss to his forehead.

"Cecil," he muttered. "Shut up."

–

–

 _**Let's take a look at the community calendar. Tomorrow, there will be an auction at the local history museum! This doesn't list any of the items up for grabs, but who** _ **doesn't** _**remember last year's fossilized remains of a creature whose reconstruction was banned by three separate and, in fact,** _ **warring** _**national governments, on the grounds that some things are not for the eyes of man? I'm sure this year will be just as exciting!** _

_**Thursday is The Day of The Orbs, and I don't have to tell any of you what that means! Which is lucky, because I am also forbidden from telling any of you what that means.** _

_**Friday, all goods and services in Night Vale will cost either twenty percent more or twenty percent less. As always, the alteration applied to each customer will be decided by the flip of a triple-headed coin.** _

_**Saturday is of no importance. Pay no heed to anything you may see outside your window on Saturday. Go about your business, and keep your eyes forward. Always forward. It will end soon.** _

_**Sunday, all primary colors in Night Vale will be inverted.** _

_**Monday is a shopping day. Shop until you drop, Night Vale! Shop until you drop to your knees in existential despair, or just physical exhaustion. Whichever hits first. We all know the consequences of ducking out early.** _

_**Of course, much of this is subject to change, listeners, as the coming days will likely require a** _ **lot** _**of rescheduling in order to clean up the town in the aftermath of this latest annoyance. Reports are coming in from Carlos, who is looking out the station window, that the streets are lined with overturned cars, chunks of houses, chunks of other things, and various stranded aquatic creatures, trying desperately to breathe.** _

_**Speak of the devastating storm of possibly underworldly origins, an update was just slipped under the door of the recording booth, listeners! I dare not ask who by. Reports are coming in from unknown but presumably trustworthy sources that the tornado is apparently - spawning** _ **mini tornadoes** _ **, which are not nearly as durable and of course don't contain nearly as much marine wildlife, and nothing larger than one isolated instance of a narwhal, but which should nonetheless be avoided just as diligently as the** _ **main** _**tornado.** _

–

–

Something slammed into the side of the building. The floor pitched alarmingly, nearly throwing Cecil headfirst over his desk, and the hallway lit up a bright, nauseating orange.

–

–

 _**Listeners, I am under orders to evacuate the recording booth. If you can still hear me, please** _ **leave your radio on** _ **, as we will now begin broadcasting a series of pre-recorded safety tips concerning emergencies such as tornadoes, fires, floods, and animals falling from the sky. These tips will play on a loop as long as our broadcasting equipment is functional.** _

_**Stay safe, Night Vale.** _

_**Stay safe.** _

–

–

There was a click as the tapes began to play, and then Cecil, who had up until now sat calmly, placidly, utterly _unruffled_ in front of the microphone while the storm raged on outside, was suddenly nothing but _movement_.

Carlos registered sensations out of order, briefly – a door slamming behind them, glass shattering and the wind getting louder, warm rain whipping at his ankles, chasing them down the hallway, Cecil saying that the shelters would be full by now, the orange light intensifying, brighter and brighter and then gone in a shower of sparks down a branch of the corridor that was already flooded, and, finally, Cecil's hand on his wrist. Cecil was dragging him.

Cecil was dragging him down the flooding corridors and telling him that the shelters were full.

"Then where are we going?" he shouted, above the roaring of the wind, and the roaring in his own ears, and the more literal roaring of something that had just been smashed halfway through a window and wasn't happy about it.

"Bathroom!" Cecil shouted back. "No windows! No electrical outlets! And if no one else is there yet, Khoshekh might be scared."

"...Khoshekh might be scared," Carlos repeated slowly, but allowed Cecil to continue dragging him. He realized belatedly that he was still carrying his iPad, clutched against his chest with his other arm. He had very little hope of the thing coming through this unscathed, but there was a reason most of his spare funding went into tablets. And at least it was something relatively heavy to hold onto in the bizarre crossfire of wind tunnels snaking down every hallway. False emotional grounding. (There was nothing false about Cecil's hand on his wrist, wrapped tight and pulling him insistently forward.)

There were six people already huddled against the far wall of the men's room, which, Carlos couldn't help but think, was not a particularly dignified or sanitary place to huddle.

Khoshekh seemed more irritated than actually afraid. He glanced briefly up at Cecil and Carlos as they came in, made a noise that rattled one of the sinks against the wall, and turned his attention back to grooming his paws. The kittens mewled, high and unnerving.

The building lurched, and Carlos whirled to shut the door behind them, just managing to slam it closed before being thrown hard against a stall.

It lurched again. The lights flickered, and only half of them came back on. There was a horrible grinding noise, your own teeth on metal, and someone in the other bathroom screamed.

For the span of a heartbeat, everything stopped. The noise fell away and the building was deathly still.

Then –

Air and _something else_ hit the wall outside with a deafening, teeth-jarring thud, the ground wrenched and rose and _twisted_ as it fell and Carlos heard something, somewhere, snap.

And then everything was happening at once.

The door blew open and hung loosely in its frame, half torn out of the hinges. The remaining lights flickered again and then died, the scene suddenly lit by nothing but cell phones and whatever filtered in from the hallway.

And more was coming in from the hallway than light.

Shifting in and out of range of the tiny, blue and green glows of dying electronics, murky water and debris and mangled sea creatures whirled in an impossible funnel cloud.

A pipe burst under a sink and the already-flooding tile floor was soon ankle-deep in freezing water. Carlos shoved away from the doorway and scrambled to fit himself under a sink, dragging Cecil with him, shivering against each other in the dark.

Khoshekh was growling, hissing, making noises that rivaled the unnatural disaster itself. The kittens, terrified, were doing something that Carlos could only describe as _howling_.

His iPad was drenched and useless as a light, refusing to show even the lock screen, but he held it in both hands and swung at anything that came near them. In the dark, it was hard to tell what he was hitting. It collided satisfyingly a few times, and once or twice with a sickening squelch.

Above their heads, a mirror took forever to shatter. Glass rained down and down and down and Carlos realized with a jolt that the twister was picking it up and dropping it and picking it up again. Finally the clattering stopped and he wondered, for an instant, whether the glass had been left on the ground or in the air.

And then Khoshekh _yowled_.

Carlos's breath caught and he shut his eyes even though it was dark – and then Cecil was shoving past him and crying out, indignant, as though meaning to _scold the tornado_ for daring to hurt the station pet, and everything, again, phased briefly out of order.

The wind howled and glass scraped together like a chef or a fighter showing off their knives and someone screamed, and someone else screamed, and Carlos screamed, because _Cecil screamed_ , and he was crawling through cold water and dead things and something latched onto the back of his neck but his hand found Cecil's ankle and he was under the sink, he was screaming at Cecil to come back, he was crawling forward under flying pieces of the station because something had hit the floor something hit the floor _something hit the floor_ –

– his hand found Cecil's ankle and then Cecil's leg and it wasn't moving _wasn't moving_ and then Cecil's throat and –

– Cecil's pulse. Weak, and too slow, and Carlos could feel the difference between water and blood, and tiny pinpricks dug into his fingers where he was pressing.

Above them, Khoshekh began to keen.

"Cecil!" Carlos cried, hoarse from all the shouting. "Cecil, you'll be okay! Don't move!"

"Mm. Don't be ridiculous, Carlos," Cecil mumbled, and Carlos didn't question the fact that he could hear him above the chaos, because it was _Cecil_. Frankly, the mumbling itself was more alarming than the fact that it was comprehendible. "Went straight through me. Well." He chuckled. "Straight _into_ me. Don't hold my hand. Don't try mouth to mouth. It's everywhere. Don't."

A pause – and then, "Okay," Carlos said, realizing Cecil had been waiting for it. "Okay, I won't. I promise. Just - just stop talking, you'll be okay, this can't last much longer –"

"Carlos," Cecil said, and Carlos shut up, because Cecil rarely interrupted him. Almost never. "Carlos, don't worry. I don't have pain sensors, remember, and I'm sure I haven't earned my final death yet."

"Cecil –"

"No, don't flatter me, I _haven't_. I don't – know how long..." He took a rattling, awful breath. "T-talk to her. She might know. She knows a lot."

Carlos blinked, and with shaking fingers tugged what he really tried not to suspect was some sort of cephalopod off the back of his neck. "Talk to _who_?"

"Talk to - this is... _Wow_. I can't... C-Carlos, it's hard to... think... _Please think_ , Carlos, about... what I'm... _Talk to her_."

"Cecil." Carlos swallowed, voice shaking as something rose in his throat. "Cecil, please stop."

"It's okay," Cecil murmured. He found Carlos's sleeve and clutched at it, but didn't touch his skin. "It's okay."

A sink fell away from the wall and hot water began to mix with the cold and the blood. Someone in the corner was crying and Khoshekh was screeching and Carlos shut his eyes and made himself keep breathing as the wind whipped his hair into his face and threw muck against his back.

Cecil squeezed his arm through his sleeve.

"It's okay," he whispered.

And his grip went slack.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All times are dangerous, but especially ours. Fatalities are a workplace hazard in the business of living.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Blood. Death. P a p e r w o r k .
> 
> Additional Note: If you like this story, thank tumblr user AllAboardTheSSFriendship for helping me plan it and letting me spout nonsense at her at unholy hours.
> 
> Additional Additional Note: (08/23/13) I have been made aware of the fact that the fanon of Cecil having a third eye in the middle of his forehead is in fact a form of cultural appropriation from various religions. Cecil's description has been altered slightly in an effort to stop being a dick. Apologies for the earlier ignorance.

The silence when the storm ended was awful and terrifying and Carlos held his breath and waited for the building to fall down.

Every inch of exposed skin stung, finally beginning to register the effects of saltwater and high-speed winds. The others in the bathroom waited hardly a minute before rushing out into the hallway, calling names and shouting for help, their pounding footsteps stark against the new quiet.

Time passed, but not much of it. Carlos was still sitting on the bathroom floor, trembling in cold water and muttering soothing things at the cats, when someone brought him a form.

He blinked, and looked slowly from the three blue sheets of paper, headed **IF APPLIC.: TO BE FILLED OUT BY SIG.OTH. IN EVENT OF CITIZEN DEATH** , to the uncomfortable-looking woman who had handed them over.

“Can I use a pen?” he asked hoarsely.

She sighed, deeply, from the very core of her being, and he wondered how many times she had been asked that question. He wondered if this, specifically, was her job. Giving forms to shell-shocked partners in the immediate aftermath of tragedy. 

She reached into her messenger bag and drew out a small chunk of graphite. At least, he assumed it was graphite. It _looked_ like graphite. That wasn't, generally speaking, a very sound basis for any sort of assumption in Night Vale, but he didn't have the energy to fully consider any other possibilities, so for now, at least, he was willing to pretend that it was definitely graphite and nothing else.

“Throw it out when you're done,” she warned. “I'll be waiting outside for the form, unless you'd like to reschedule the filing. In which case I'll be taking the body for holding during the interim.”

Carlos was already signing his name at the bottom of the first sheet, propping the ruined iPad up against one knee as a desk and scanning through the document to see what he was agreeing to.

The woman sighed again, and went out into the hall.

Carlos settled back against a broken sink, and lost himself in the familiar tedium of filling out paperwork, and did not look at the body on the floor.

 

\--

 

_**How long ago, at the time of writing, did the death occur?** _

_Approximately thirty minutes._

 

_**Who is the deceased party?** _

_Cecil. Last name not given. To anyone._

 

_**What is your exact relation to the deceased party?** _

_Romantic partner, level 2ac-7f-5L9*._

 

_**To the best of your knowledge, has the deceased party achieved Final Death?** _

_[ ] Yes. Condolences, and congratulations on choosing such a model life partner! Proceed to the bottom section of the third page._

_[x] No. Continue. Do not look at the bottom section of the third page. We will know if you do._

 

_**Are you aware of the deceased party's wishes regarding housing of their corporeal form (i.e., “body”) during the period of their processing?** _

_[ ] Yes. Proceed to the top section of the third page._

_[x] No. Continue. Tear the third page into seven strips. Eat the smallest of these, and scatter the rest to the winds of the sand wastes at your earliest convenience._

 

_**Would you like to turn the “body” of the deceased party over to the City Council for protection and preservation during this time?** _

_[ ] Yes. Be aware, checking this box will result in immediate and irreversible action._

_[x] No._

 

_**Are you in possession of/can you procure the equipment necessary to keep the “body” of the deceased party preserved, AND (if applicable) reverse any decomposition which may have already occurred?** _

_[x] Yes._

_[ ] No._

 

_**Check one:** _

 

_[ ] I wish to receive guidance regarding all options from a Council-appointed Post-Temp-Mortem Dealings official._

 

_[x] I wish to retain possession of the “body” of the deceased party during the period of processing. I understand and accept all related responsibilities, including the possibility of murder and/or assault charges should any irreversible harm come to the “body.”_

\--

The next page contained only a few blocks of text, and another signature line at the very bottom.

\--

_All times are dangerous, but especially ours. Fatalities are a workplace hazard in the business of living. Grief is not an acceptable reason to call in sick for more than three (3) days in a row. We mean this both figuratively and literally._

_Unless you are unemployed, in which case we mean it only figuratively._

_The City Council has many duties to attend to. Revivification of citizens who have not met approval for Final Death is not the topmost of those duties. Neither is the process through which approval for Final Death is given or denied. Or the process through which loved ones are notified of this decision. **Death is commonplace. The preservation of life must take priority.**_

_You are encouraged but not required to also take the bolded statements as a positive message regarding your future in the wake of this tragedy._

\--

 

For what felt like hours, Carlos sat and stared at this second page, occasionally actually rereading it, more often letting the information sit there unacknowledged as his mind wandered. Water was dripping from the ceiling, down the walls and the pipes and the back of his neck from his hair. Khoshekh was curled in an irritated ball, hissing every so often – he wasn't badly injured; Carlos had checked. The glass had nicked one of his paws, and the wound was already healing over. Carlos tried not to think about this, for more reasons than he would normally have tried not to think about it.

Eventually, he remembered that there was someone waiting on these papers, and that this was probably a busy day for her and he was only making her job more difficult by stalling. He swallowed a bit less than a seventh of page three and took pages one and two out to the woman, who was tapping her foot and smiling tightly. He thanked her politely and let her supervise as he dropped the remains of the graphite into a toilet.

There had been days, _certainly_ there had been days, when he would have grimaced and fished the thing out the second she was gone, because writing implements were writing implements and soap was soap.

As it was, he had other things to worry about.

–

–

Moving Cecil's body was easy, because it was difficult. The task itself was physically and mentally taxing – it demanded his attention and focus and tuning out the panic bubbling just under the surface was made simple by dint of the fact that it was necessary.

The worst part by far was getting down to the ground floor, because people were starting to come out of the shelters in the basement. They came out and they came _up_ , and they _saw him_ , and then everything was a blur of shocked faces, screams and questions and someone solemnly holding doors open for him, and then he was outside.

The air did not smell fresh.

He didn't look down as he walked to the parking lot. There was absolutely nothing he wanted to see in that direction. He would not even have been looking forward, if it had been at all avoidable. The streets were slick with foaming water and blood, littered with debris and the occasional dead dolphin or lamprey or something with far too many tentacles to be an octopus. People were cautiously picking their way through the ruins of buildings, calling out to loved ones, digging through the rubble – some searching frantically for what they didn't want to believe they had lost, some trying to be sneaky about looting. Carlos was thoroughly familiar with post-disaster Night Vale.

He reached the parking lot. He stopped. He nearly dropped Cecil.

“ _Fuck._ ”

Of course their fucking cars were both gone, of course, of _course,_ there had been _tornadoes_ , why the hell had he not thought of the fact that the _cars_ would be gone and he would be left with a dead body draped over his arms and stooping lower and lower as his back started to give after over an hour hunched on a bathroom floor and no way to get anywhere and oh god oh _god_ he was going to pass out. There was blood everywhere, all over Cecil, all over _him_ , all over the ground, everywhere, in the _air_ , he could _smell_ it, and he was _used_ to the smell but not this much, not this close, not carrying Cecil's corpse bridal-style to nowhere and everything was spinning and he was going to pass out or be sick or both and then he would be arrested for letting Cecil decompose.

He shut his eyes. He took a deep breath and did not gag on it.

He drew himself up as straight as he could and bellowed, “POLICE!”

"Oh, thank goodness," said a man in a balaclava, pushing up a section of asphalt and climbing out of a hole in the ground. "In this sort of emergency we have to conserve energy and resources so we're not allowed to interfere without orders unless a citizen asks for our help explicitly, and we've all been worried sick. Is he really _dead_?" 

The officer was hovering (not literally, this time) around the two of them, looking as concerned as his uniform's expressively limiting aesthetic allowed.

Carlos was not prepared for this.

He had been expecting to be treated as an inconvenience – _do you know how_ _ **busy**_ _we are, do you think you're the only one trying to transport a corpse –_ ; had been vaguely prepared to argue that if the police knew he was having difficulties getting Cecil's body preserved in time to keep it habitable upon his soul's return, and if they failed to help him in this, then they would be aiding in committing a crime; had allowed even vaguer plans of grand theft auto to begin to take shape in case of failure.

“...I just need a ride,” he said. “Please.”

–

–

The work was difficult, because it was easy.

This was not the first time he had preserved a body. It was not even the first time he had had to reverse the early stages of decomposition. It had stopped mattering a long time ago that he was a seismologist first and a geologist second and everything else third and scattered – right around the time it had stopped mattering that trees weren't supposed to speak and people weren't supposed to temporarily lose their sense of proprioception as punishment for expired plates. He was a scientist. He was adaptable, he was intelligent, he was _self-reliant_. That was what mattered. He did what he had to. He researched fields he knew little or nothing about beyond the basics taught in general courses, he stayed up for three or four days reading every scrap of information he could find, and after a quick nap and some aspirin, he was a botanist or an ornithologist or an atmospheric chemist.

Or a Mary Shelley character.

So the work was easy. As long as he didn't _look._

When he was finished setting everything up, he stepped back from the table and took a deep breath and made himself check everything over carefully for mistakes.

The table was literally just a table – cleared of previous equipment and experiments; boxes stacked underneath for added stability; tubes and wires and lines of ash trailing to machines and bags and precise bloodstone arrangements.

Yes. Yes. Everything was in order. Everything was _fine_. He was done. He didn't know how long he'd been working. There was light streaming in through the gaps in the curtains, which meant nothing. 

He wasn't tired. He was shaking, now that his hands weren't doing anything important, and he couldn't really feel his legs in a way that had nothing to do with traffic violations, but he wasn't _tired_. His mind was buzzing, begging him to _do something_ , something that would keep it safely occupied.

“I should help,” he said, to no one, and went to the sink and shoved his sleeves up and scrubbed chemicals and other things off of his hands. 

The town was in shambles. This wasn't unusual. There were procedures in place, and he had become a part of them. He didn't know how long he had been in the lab, but cleanup would certainly still be going on. He could help. He should help.

He turned to walk to the door and his eyes wandered and caught and then he was rooted to the floor, half twisted away from the counter and staring at Cecil, _seeing_ Cecil. 

Cecil, who always looked like _Cecil_ but never looked the _same_. Who might get up in the morning with brown eyes and go to bed with blue. Who sometimes shifted almost his entire form between blinks and sometimes changed slowly, imperceptibly, so that by the time Carlos noticed anything he was braiding hair he hadn't had before and his sleeves hung down over his hands instead of not quite reaching his wrists. Who had told Carlos once that he didn't know what he was “supposed” to look like, didn't have a _default state_ ; that the only things that had ever "stuck" were the color of his skin and the overall basic _shape_ of his face.

Numb, dazed, and too wrapped up in his own head to stop himself, Carlos approached the table.

Cecil's head was shaved, like it had been this morning, even though he hadn't shaved it. His fingers were long and almost skeletal, the way Carlos had noticed them becoming sometime in the probably-afternoon, just before the two of them had split up for work. On his forehead, just above each eye, the outlines of two others shone like scars, pale purple against deep brown.

Cecil had died short and thin and darkly freckled, and in the time that had passed since then, the only thing that had changed was the slow and sickening creep of pallor that came with blood loss. 

Carlos backed away.

“Nnn,” he said, and then, tripping slowly over his own feet and sinking to the floor, “Nn _nnope_. No. Tomorrow. I'll help tomorrow. Figure this... _this_ whole... _thing_ out tomorrow. Just.” The lab wasn't all that large, but it was too empty, and too bright, and in the quiet stillness his voice resonated in a way that made him grit his teeth. He ran his hands through his hair, shoved his glasses off his face, marveled for a moment that his glasses were still intact, and spoke into his palms. “Everything. Everything can happen tomorrow.”

His muscles were aching, begging him not to move now that he'd come to his senses and realized it was shock keeping him going, but if he remained on the floor there was a serious danger of curling into a ball and crying himself to sleep. Which would only lead to headaches and self-hatred in the morning. (“Morning” being whenever he woke up. Sometimes the sun was accommodating enough to match him.)

He dragged himself to the cot at the other end of the room, peeled himself out of clothes soaked with blood and saltwater, and pulled the thin blankets over his head against the light still crawling in from the window.

As the shock continued to subside, his mind clamored for activity – desperate to analyze this, process it, fix it, obsess about it, let it become the point around which his every thought and feeling revolved, but Carlos had been in Night Vale for a while now and he had been himself for much longer, and he knew how to outlast his own brain.

Sleep, right now, was the most important thing. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.


End file.
